Court backs restrictive LAPD immigration policy

A city can prohibit its police from stopping or arresting people to find out if they are illegal immigrants, a state appeals court ruled Wednesday in a Los Angeles case with implications for San Francisco’s sanctuary ordinance.

A taxpayer represented by the conservative group Judicial Watch challenged a 30-year-old Los Angeles Police Department rule barring officers from either arresting anyone for entering the United States illegally or taking any action solely to determine someone’s immigration status.

The suit claimed the policy conflicts with a 1996 federal law that requires state and local governments to let their employees share information about someone’s immigration status with federal authorities. If a city bars police from obtaining immigration information from people they arrest, Judicial Watch argued, it frustrates the purpose of the law.

But the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles upheld a judge’s decision that found no conflict between the local policy and the federal law. The restriction on police conduct during arrests “has no effect on the voluntary flow of immigration information” between local officers and federal authorities, the court said.

Los Angeles police can ask immigration-related questions of people they arrest for other reasons and can relay the information to federal agents, Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling. He said the Constitution prohibits the federal government from requiring state and local governments to enforce immigration law but allows voluntary local enforcement under federal supervision.

San Francisco’s 1989 sanctuary ordinance includes a virtually identical provision, barring city employees from arresting, stopping or questioning people based solely on their national origin or immigration status. The ordinance also forbids the use of city money to help enforce federal immigration law, except as required by U.S. or state law.

The policy is being tested by Judicial Watch in a separate suit accusing San Francisco of violating a state law that requires police to notify federal authorities if a suspect in a drug case appears to be a noncitizen. The law applies to legal residents, who can be deported for committing serious crimes, as well as to illegal immigrants.

A state appeals court reinstated the Judicial Watch lawsuit in October, saying the California law was based on the state’s authority to limit drug trafficking and was not an invalid attempt to regulate immigration.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s office noted that San Francisco police have a written policy allowing them to notify immigration officials when they arrest someone for one of the drug crimes covered by the state law and have reason to believe the person is not a U.S. citizen, as long as that belief is not based solely on the person’s appearance or inability to speak English.

In July 2008, Mayor Gavin Newsom reversed a long-standing city practice and said the sanctuary policy allowed police to turn juvenile illegal immigrants over to federal authorities for deportation if they were being held on felony charges.